Isaiah 58:2 - 9 BUSY BUSY BUSY V. BEING AVAILABLE TO YOUR FAMILIES
Face my family with their sins! They're busy, busy, busy at worship, and love studying all about me. To all appearances they're a nation of right-living people—law-abiding, God-honoring. They ask me, 'What's the right thing to do?' and love having me on their side. But they also complain, 'Why do we fast and you don't look our way? Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?' "Well, here's why:
"The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit. The kind of fasting you do won't get your prayers off the ground. "This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. ... So, I toed the line on Saturday in the Kansas City Marathon for World Vision. 800 kids today will lose their life because of polluted water sources. Fundraising to help World Vision build one well at a time---$50 builds one well for one child for a lifetime of clean water.
You'll call out for help and I'll say, 'Here I am.' Isaiah 58:9 - I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places...You'll be like a well-watered garden...If you honor it by refusing 'business as usual,' making money, running here and there— Then you'll be free to enjoy God!
I do not cure your unholiness by overlooking or understanding it. To overlook it would be to miss the spot on the x-ray that will destroy you. To understand it in light of what you've suffered would be to excuse it. I do not heal your selfishness by affirming your value. I solve your deepest problem with My self-sacrificing, reconciling embrace that forgives all that is unholy within you." What hope is given by the prophet Isaiah! Faith to believe God is good in any circumstance. Love that pays any price to bless another both spring from hope. 66 LL
Isaiah 59:1-2 WRONGHEADED LIVES CAUSED THE SPLIT
God's arm is not too short. God's ears are not stopped up. There's nothing wrong with God; the wrong is in you. Your wrongheaded lives caused the split between you and God....59:12 - Our wrongdoings pile up before you, God, our sins stand up and accuse us...Good is MIA, missing in action.
But You issue a decree in v. 20: I'll arrive as Redeemer to those who leave their sins.
PHOTO: Walking every day and thinking about those without. Godspeed.
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